“Historical” year for genocide court

The past year has been “historical” for the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), according to its fourth annual report, issued at UN headquarters on Monday. The report, covering the period July 1998 to June 1999, said the Tribunal’s first four convictions of genocide suspects had been delivered during the year, “thereby beginning the process of transforming aspirations for international criminal justice into reality”. During the period, nine more accused persons were arrested in Togo, Namibia, Mali, Benin, Kenya and South Africa and transferred to Arusha, and 31 indicted people were now in custody awaiting trial in connection with the 1994 genocide, the report said.

Another significant development was the ruling by the Court that rape constituted an act of genocide, because it had been systematic and perpetrated against Tutsi women only, the report stated. Also during the period, a third Trial Chamber was established to speed up the ICTR’s work, and awareness of the Tribunal’s activities was raised within Rwanda, it said. The ICTR’s work represented a “collective effort on behalf of the international community to bring justice and truth to the people of Rwanda”, the report concluded.